Soap Opera Ch. 02

"Hello, Commander, I---- oh, sorry, didn't mean to intrude." said Thomas Cromwell, who'd come into the tent.

"Thomas, they're reading me my rights!" wailed Kayla, looking to the actor for guidance. "Should I get a lawyer?"

"We have two lawyers here." said Thomas. "They're at the hotel. If you're concerned, you should have one of them here with you."

"Mr. Cromwell, if you'll call one of those lawyers for us, I'd be grateful." I said. Thomas went outside to make the call.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I'm Peter Arnsparger, attorney for the production company." said Peter Arnsparger, attorney for the company. He was middle-aged, with a shaved-bald very round head and a body that would one day match it in rotundity. He was wearing a full suit.

"Are you a criminal attorney, Mr. Arnsparger?" I asked.

"Not normally." he said. "I usually handle issues with the contract we have with our hosts, in this case your County. But I understand that Kayla needs someone to sit in with her? I can do that."

"Sure, have a seat." I said. I re-read Kayla the rights from the card, and the lawyer nodded to her when I asked if she understood. Finally, she said she did.

"Okay, Kayla," I said, "I am Commander Donald Troy, and this is Commander Cindy Ross. We just need to ask you some questions to try to clear up some things about the death of Mr. Moore. You are the one that found Mr. Moore's body, is that right?"

"Uh, yeah." said Kayla. "I went to take him some scripts, and he was lying on the floor..." She began tearing up.

"I know this is hard on you, and I appreciate you helping us." I said soothingly. "What did you do with the scripts?"

"I... I don't even remember." said Kayla. "I think I had them in my hand when the other girls helped me back to the office tent."

"Had you taken Mr. Moore any scripts earlier in the day?" I asked.

"Yes." said Kayla. "In the morning, before the wedding scene was shot. I stayed while he looked at them. He has a stamp he uses to reject scripts. He used them for a couple, told me what he needed to replace them, and accepted a couple of others."

"What did he say when he rejected the scripts?" I asked. "What were his instructions for changes to be made?"

"I don't really remember." said Kayla. "Oh... one of them was the scene with Carolyn and Danny. He said it had to be rewritten to be a more positive interaction between them. The other was further down the timeline. He wanted more of an argument between Carolyn and Thomas."

"I see." I said. "So what do you do with rejected scripts? Shred them? Keep them?"

"We put them in a file folder and put it in the cabinet." said Kayla. "Sometimes Ken would come in and say 'You know that script I rejected? I changed my mind, I want it back.' and we'd dig it out of the file. We'd shred them later on, like we do with the scripts we've already used in the shoots."

"That brings up a point." I said. "We found a file of rejected scripts in the back of your desk drawer. Is that where you normally keep them?"

"Uh... yeah, sometimes." Kayla said, faltering with her words. "If we were working on the changes, I'd hold on to the rejected ones for a while."

"So why in the back of your desk, where nobody else can easily get to them?" I asked, allowing myself to peer at the girl a bit harder.

"Uh... I... I just put them there, out of the way." Kayla said. "I... I guess I didn't think anything about it."

"Okay, okay." I said. "So how well did you know Ken Moore? What was he like?"

"I didn't know him all that well." said Kayla. "The only time I ever saw him was when I took scripts to him. He wasn't unfriendly, but he wasn't friendly, either. He was always busy, and always driven. He had a lot to do, and he wanted everything to be perfect."

"Do you know if anyone wanted to harm him?" I asked. "Or why anyone would want to?"

"No." said Kayla. "No one in the office ever said anything really bad about him. Someone might be complaining that he was changing the scripts as fast as they could get them written, and the deadlines were always ten minutes ago, but I never heard any personal animosity."

"Was he dating anyone? One of the actresses on set?" I asked.

"No." said Kayla. "He preferred the casting couch for his sexual relationships. But I think he got it on with Carolyn, like a lot of other guys around here. There was some competition for her; everyone expected her to divorce Kevin and they all wanted to be the guy in her life."

"Okay." I said. "Thank you for coming over and talking to us." Kayla and the lawyer got up and left the tent. As the door flap opened, I saw Thomas Cromwell outside. I heard him asking Kayla if everything was okay, and her saying she felt much better.

I also saw two other persons coming up. They were my wife Laura, and the gorgeous Latina actress, Maria Del Fuentes. They both looked smoking hot, and they both looked very happy. And I knew why: Laura had spent the night with Maria in Maria's trailer. And if I didn't miss my guess, they had sated their lesbian lusts for each other with long sex sessions.

And I rarely miss my guesses.

"Hello ladies." I said as they got to the tent flap. "Come on inside." They did so. "You look like happy campers today."

"They had a great night." Cindy said, deadpan flat, not even looking up from her laptop screen. I chuckled.

"She's right, it was awesome." said Maria, clearly smitten as she looked at Laura. Laura smiled.

"It was only lacking a handsome man with two iron crowbars... one of them between his legs." Laura said pointedly. Cindy arched her eyebrows at that, though still not looking up from the laptop screen.

"Ho-lee Gee-zus." I said, shaking my head. "Okay, let's get serious for a moment. Maria, I need to talk with you, professionally. My profession."

"Sure." said Maria. I read her her rights from the card, and she said she understood.

"Okay, you and Dr. Fredricson went to your trailer after lunch, is that right?"

"Yes." said Maria.

"And the two of you were there when the screams started?" I asked.

"Yes, we'd just gotten to my trailer a few minutes before." said Maria. "When we heard the screams, Laura rushed out and I ran behind her. They let her into Ken's trailer while I waited outside, but I guess there was nothing she could do..." Her voice trailed off.

"No, a doctor was there within seconds of him being found; so no, there was nothing to be done." I said agreeably. "Maria, let me ask you this: is there anyone you know of who might've wanted to harm Ken? For any reason at all?"

Maria pondered a second, then said "I don't know this for sure... but Carolyn is pregnant, and there's been some friction between all the men on the cast about it. Most of the guys have had sex with Carolyn a number of times, and I think each guy was hoping he was the father."

"Funny," I said, "most men run like hell away from paternity accusations. Were Carolyn and her husband Kevin having problems?"

"I don't know." said Maria. "Uh... Carolyn and Kevin had an open relationship, like you do." I kind of wished she hadn't have said that while being interviewed on camera, but it's not like Laura and I kept our relationship a secret.

Maria continued: "But before she got pregnant, Carolyn was getting more and more restless. By that I mean she was openly flirting with other guys, taking them to bed with her, flouting it in front of Kevin. He seemed to be okay with it. She's always had her own trailer, but she used to spend most nights with Kevin. But then she started taking other men to her trailer and having them spend the night with her."

I nodded. "Was Ken one of those men?" I asked.

"For a little while, yes." said Maria. "And like I said, there was some friction over Carolyn between all the guys for a while. I'm not sure who the father of her baby is, and I don't know who was winning the fight for her. But that's the only motive I can think of. Ken was respected by everyone, even those that might not have liked him a lot."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Breakfast was being served in the Dining Tent, so I thought I'd try to get some coffee from there. As I came out of the TCPD tent, Thomas Cromwell fell in stride with me.

"I hope you don't mind me tagging along with you this morning, Commander." he said. "I don't have a scene this morning, so I can either be bored in my trailer, or fascinated watching what you do."

"Sure, come on along." I said. "And I'm sure you'll be very fascinated by the pollutants I put into my morning coffee." Thomas laughed.

"Seriously, any progress?" he asked.

"We've gathered some good data, and we're putting some things together." I said as we went into the Dining Tent. The 'cashier' was using a reader to read people's cards. I asked if I could sneak around and get a cup of coffee, and Thomas stuck out his card for her to read, saying it was on him. The cashier said that coffee was on the house, and they were going to set up some coffeemakers for the Officers soon.

Armed with two cups of coffee (one for Cindy), I headed back to the TCPD tent with Thomas. Going in, I handed Cindy her coffee and sat down where I'd been. "Have a seat." I said to Thomas, indicating the chair Maria had been sitting in.

"Doing paperwork?" Thomas asked.

"No." I said. "What you are looking at is the actual work to solve the case. We're going over all the data our CSIs collected, and all the interviews from yesterday."

"Looking for something that suggests someone is lying?" asked Thomas.

"Yes, that." I said. "But that's not so easy to see. I'm looking for patterns... a bunch of people saying the same things, or saying different things when they should be saying the same things."

"And there is nobody like this man that can spot those patterns and discrepancies." said Cindy, not looking up from her laptop as she said it.

"Actually," I said, "I'm glad you're here, Thomas. I have a couple of questions: first, what is the hiring process? The normal, standard procedure? Who does the hiring? And firing, for that matter."

"The usual procedure is that the producer and director will establish a need." said Thomas. "They'll call the casting agency, tell them what they need, and the agency sends people to be interviewed. If they're women, Ken and Kevin would have several pleasurable hours of 'casting couch' interviews. With men, it lasted a lot less time; I don't think either man is... or was... gay."

"That's a thought." I said. "Anyone you know on this set who is gay?"

"Benny Black was in porn before he came here." said Thomas. "I don't know if he was in gay porn or not, but a lot of male porn stars make both kinds of films. And Danny Darmond might be gay, though I don't know for sure. But he's Carolyn's favorite stud right now, so who knows?"

"So they hire from casting agencies?" I asked, to get the conversation back on track.

"Usually." said Thomas. "Sometimes a friend of a friend gets in a word with Kevin or Ken. We rarely have open casting calls."

"So it was Kevin and Ken that did the hiring?"

"Yes." said Thomas. "For the most part. The 'Suits', the execs in our parent company offices, do the office staff hiring, and Ken almost exclusively did the hiring for scriptwriters; he knew what he needed to write the scripts he wanted."

"What about firing?" I asked.

"Normally Kevin," said Thomas, "but he usually went to the 'Suits' first. They made sure the legal ducks were in a row. It is damned near impossible to fire someone in the State of California. It might be easier here."

"No, at least not where the Police Department is concerned." I said. "So Ken couldn't fire anyone?"

"No, not officially." said Thomas. "If Ken wanted someone, particularly a cast member gone, he'd go to Kevin about it. Usually Ken would get his way, of course, especially if an actor was not working out or was not in sync with what Ken wanted. Rules violations, like intoxication on set, or drugs, were a different matter; Ken could order them off the set and out of the studio completely, with pink slips to follow."

"Of course," continued Thomas, "if the brass didn't fire someone that Ken wanted gone, he still had things he could do. He could berate them on the set, give them holy hell. He could alter their scripts, or give them fewer scenes. If someone found his hot scene with Maria rewritten so that he was simply catching her in bed with another man, that guy would realize that he was on the outside looking in... in more than one way."

Just then, Kayla the intern poked her head into the tent. "Has anyone seen 'The Madam'?" she asked. "Carolyn and Danny are doing the scene by the River in twenty minutes, and we're not even set up."

"Has anyone seen her at all?" Cindy asked. Her vibe became my vibe.

"No ma'am." Kayla said. I was already up and moving and grabbing my Police radio. I hit the button that makes the loud noise.

"Break! Break! Break!" I said, causing all chatter to cease. "All units, begin looking for the assistant director Seiko, a.k.a. 'The Madam'. Search the entire Fairgrounds. I say again, begin a complete search for..."

Part 10 - Crime Scene Redux

We sat in the TCPD tent, waiting for news. "Who would be the director if you can't find The Madam?" I asked Thomas.

"I don't know." said Thomas. "Maybe Victor; I think he's directed some episodes in the past." I nodded. And we did not have much longer to wait:

"Culver to Commander Troy." said the radio.

"This is Commander Troy. Go ahead, Culver."

"We found her, sir."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We headed down the walkway to to the trailer area. Tanya saw me come up behind her and sped up her Tank, and damned if I couldn't catch up to her unless I wanted to look like an idiot running pell-mell down the path. We came to the empty trailer, the one Cal and Dru Romano had been left in to meet their blackmailer. Once we got there, Cindy and I went on inside.

Again Laura was already there, and Sr. Patrolman Culver was with her. On the floor was the unfortunate Seiko. She was lying flat on her back, her eyes open and staring sightlessly at the ceiling. She was wearing the same clothes she'd worn the day before. A scarf was wrapped around her neck, and her face and belly were bloated and an unseemly shade of blue.

"Strangled, dead for hours." I said as I knelt down beside my wife.

"I'd say 'not much gets past you', but it's not funny." Laura said. "Yes, dead for hours. The body is stone-cold, fully bloating."

I got on the radio and called for CSIs and a vehicle to take the body next door to the morgue. Then I began looking around the trailer. It was totally empty, save for furniture that came with the place: table and chairs in the breakfast nook, sofa in the main room, a bed with no sheets in the bedroom.

"Damn, that's a strong smell of Clorox." I said. I opened the door to the tiny bathroom. The plug had been put in the bottom of the sink, and the sink filled with Clorox. On the floor below were two large, empty containers with the 'Clorox' label. And soaking in the Clorox in the sink was a blood-stained shirt...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Jesus." Thomas Cromwell said forlornly as he, Cindy, and I watched a small distance away, as CSI's crawled around the area like fire ants. "Poor Ken hasn't even been put in a casket yet, and now Seiko's dead." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cindy turn to look at us for a moment, then turn her attention back to the crime scene.

Just then, Victor Kuykendall came up to me. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Commander, but Kevin asked me to tell you that I'm acting as Director now. Kevin also asked me to tell you that we are all at your service, and if there is anything at all you need, please let us know."

"Thank you." I said. "Where is Kevin, by the way?"

"He's on the phone, to our executives in California." Victor said. "We call them the 'Suits'. They're our parent company's people. Bean-counters, and the like. They're the ones that put out the fires.. but there's no putting this one out."

"Oh I wouldn't say that." I said. "We'll get this crime scene processed, and then you can go about filming, and drive on from there. The show will go on... as it must."

"Commander," asked Victor, "is anyone else in danger of dying?" I felt as much as saw Cindy looking right through me, mentally as well as visually.

"No, I don't think so." I said. "Though if anyone witnessed anything suspicious, anything at all, they need to come forward immediately, so that we can protect them..."

Part 11 - Suspects

Wednesday, May 9th, 12:00noon. I called a meeting of the Detective Division and its leadership in Classroom 'E' at Police Headquarters.

In Classroom 'E' were me, Cindy Ross, Chief Moynahan, Tanya Perlman, Mary Milton, Joanne Warner, Teddy Parker, Theo Washington, Jerome Davis, Chris Purvis, Tim Geiger, Grubby Paul, Roy McGhillie, Sonali, Lainie, and Mark Walker.

"Whaddya got, Walker?" I asked to start us off.

"The trailer Seiko was found in was totally wiped down. No fingerprints at all." said Mark Walker. "So the killer took the time to wipe the place down. We're sent the shirt in the bathroom sink to the State Crime Lab, to see if they could get anything from the bloodstains."

"It's very likely Ken Moore's blood." I said. "The shirt was Cloroxed to destroy any DNA of the person who was wearing it."

"Yes sir." said Mark Walker. "We also found some bloodstains on the inside of Seiko's shirt, but she had no corresponding injuries on her body. We hope the State Crime Lab can type that, and maybe get some DNA. Other than that, there's just nothing there that's going to help us find the killer."

"Okay, thanks." I said. "Lainie, tell me about our victim Seiko."

"Her full name is Seiko Wazamazu." Lainie said in her 'mousey' voice. Lainie was a 'plain Jane', with very long straight brown hair, glasses over her cute face, and a slenderish body. She continued: "Seiko has been with the 'Days of Promise' show for over twenty years. She was listed as the 'Assistant Director', but she was more like the XO of a military company. She just took care of everything."

"When Ken was not on set directing," Lainie continued, "Kevin himself did the directing far more than Seiko did, though she did sometimes direct smaller scenes being shot at the same time as the larger ones. She just did what was needed, when it was needed. She also knew what was going on behind-the-scenes; if she wanted to be, she could be the Elsie Gringer of 'Days of Promise'."

Elsie Gringer was the Town & County's Social Reporter, as well as Bettina Wurtzburg's aunt. Elsie was very, very excited about the upcoming Burke-Croyle wedding, which she was calling 'the wedding of the century' in her online columns.

Lainie finished up: "Before being hired by 'Days of Promise', Seiko owned a casting company. She sold it, but it's still the company that 'Days of Promise' uses when they need new people."

"Good report. Thanks." I said. "Martha the M.E. sent me a preliminary autopsy report. Seiko, a.k.a. 'The Madam', died of strangulation, somewhere between 8:00pm last night and 4:00am this morning, likelier earlier than later. The early bloodwork shows the possibility of drugs, such as cocaine, in her system, but they need more testing to show that better; she probably had not used anything very recently. And spot questioning of people by our Officers is showing no one remembers seeing Seiko after dinner."


"Unfortunately, they don't have hardly anything in the way of security cameras, especially in the living quarters areas." I continued. "We did have Officers patrolling on foot as well as hired Security, but no one saw anything."

"Sir," asked Jerome, "could one of the cast have been masquerading as a Security officer? So if he or she were seen, they'd be thought of as Security and ignored."